Apple announces that RCS support is coming to iPhone next year

Excellent. The next step is for Google to release a free and open source way for Android developers to build apps that send RCS messages. Currently, the only messaging app on Android that fully supports RCS is Messages by Google, which is closed source and requires Google Play Services to activate RCS features.<p>Also, end-to-end encryption is not part of the RCS specification, but is a proprietary extension to RCS that Google has made exclusive to Messages by Google.[1] This feature should be made open and added to the actual RCS specification so that Apple and other vendors can make use of it.<p>(Notes: There is a proprietary RCS API which Google only allows Samsung apps to use to communicate with Messages by Google.[2] Verizon has an app called Verizon Messages or Message+ that uses RCS to some extent, but this is an incomplete implementation that only works on Samsung devices on the Verizon network with no cross-carrier compatibility.[3])<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;google-enables-end-to-end-encryption-for-androids-default-sms-rcs-app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;gadgets&#x2F;2021&#x2F;06&#x2F;google-enables-end-t...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.xda-developers.com&#x2F;google-messages-rcs-api-third-party-apps&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.xda-developers.com&#x2F;google-messages-rcs-api-third...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.verizon.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;knowledge-base-222792&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.verizon.com&#x2F;support&#x2F;knowledge-base-222792&#x2F;</a>

This is something I never thought I&#x27;d see. I hope the GSM association moves fast to make robust E2EE a standard required for proper implementation for carriers. That would go a long way in making a huge improvement over SMS&#x2F;MMS.<p>This is a win for RCS, ultimately. Maybe this will kick carriers into high gear to up their messaging standard support game and have standard interop.<p>I don&#x27;t think this will lead to a decline in iMessage usage, nor do I think it will be catalyst enough to get people to move to Android, because there are still things RCS won&#x27;t be able to support[0] but its a big step forward for a more pleasant experience between iOS and Android.<p>[0]: Memojis, reactions (tapbacks I think their called) and I&#x27;m curious about threaded messages. Also, at <i>this time</i> the actual RCS standard does not specificy that messages must be end to end encrypted. iMessage on the other hand has robust E2EE encryption (and you can get even more robust encryption by enabling Advanced Data Protection)

I was working on RCS systems back in 2012. It was the future back them - incredible low latency for messaging and gaming, rich messaging, and a decent SDK.<p>How did carriers fuck it up so badly that, a decade later, it&#x27;s barely a blip on the messaging landscape? The were so desperate to stop OTT (over the top) services that they... locked everything down in the hope that customers wouldn&#x27;t churn. It backfired spectacularly.

&gt; <i>Breaking: Apple will support RCS - the green bubble shame set to end</i><p>Note that the green bubble could be kept for other reasons: RCS is a major improvement over SMS&#x2F;MMS, but there could still be functionality that isn&#x27;t on par with a completely in-house system like &#x27;iMessage&#x27;.<p>The green&#x2F;blue distinction may still be useful for setting certain expectations on how things work.

What a surprise! I&#x27;m quite sure RCS bubbles will be green though, and that&#x27;s still going to be enough of a difference when it comes to teen groups and even adult dating.<p>The EU may mandate interoperability, but I don&#x27;t see them mandating bubble color...

The lede is quite cleverly buried here. Key sentence is &quot;We will be adding support for RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association&quot;<p>So no end to end encryption and the bubbles will most still likely be green.<p>Even with the mutterings about improving security etc it&#x27;s unlikely that the GSM Association will ever sign off on any encryption scheme that isn&#x27;t weak or backdoored.

&gt; This is not Apple opening up iMessage to other platforms. Instead, it’s the company adopting RCS separately from iMessage.<p>Very important.

As an Android user, it&#x27;d be nice if replying &quot;No&quot; to &quot;Do you want RCS?&quot; meant &quot;Never ask me again&quot; and wasn&#x27;t just interpreted as &quot;ask me again in next week and every week thereafter&quot;.

Interestingly enough the person who wrote the white paper for the signal protocol implementation in Googles RCS, Emad Omara, now works for Apple<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gstatic.com&#x2F;messages&#x2F;papers&#x2F;messages_e2ee.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gstatic.com&#x2F;messages&#x2F;papers&#x2F;messages_e2ee.pdf</a>

Is there E2EE in the actual RCS specification? Can there be, given that telcos are usually subject to lawful intercept laws?<p>AIUI, what Google&#x2F;Android does is have their own extension, with the Content-Type of the message being &quot;application&#x2F;vnd.google.rcs.encrypted&quot;:<p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gstatic.com&#x2F;messages&#x2F;papers&#x2F;messages_e2ee.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gstatic.com&#x2F;messages&#x2F;papers&#x2F;messages_e2ee.pdf</a><p>This is kind of like, with (E)SMTP&#x2F;IMAP, having your own capability of &quot;X-GOOG-ENCRYPT&quot; if the standards-based &quot;STARTTLS&quot; was not around.<p>So while RCS gives many other improvement over SMS&#x2F;MMS, encryption is not one of them.<p>(Personally I have an iPhone, but don&#x27;t conect &#x27;iMessage&#x27;, and generally stick with SMS&#x2F;MMS.)

&gt; This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users,&quot; said an Apple spokesperson.<p>I could be wrong but I don’t see anything here to suggest non-iMessages will no longer have the “green bubble” like the author assumes.

Despite the usual &quot;I want Apple to be a walled garden&quot; sentiment that is prevalent on HN, I&#x27;m glad that the EU, DoJ and all the various corporate lawsuits are finally forcing Apple to open up their ecosystem, even if it is still far from where it should be. The smartphone is now the primary personal computer for most of the planet, and deserves to be treated as such.

&gt; the green bubble shame set to end<p>I&#x27;m betting the non-Apple bubbles will remain green... and remain a bit stigmatized.<p>It was never about the resolution of pictures and even technical limitations around group chat was just part of it. It&#x27;s a social thing and the technical protocol is incidental.<p>Dr. Seuss probably explained it best in The Sneetches.

Imagine being an exec at Nothing and seeing your acquisition turn into dust<p>Edit: it was not an acquisition but a partnership

The next significant step would be opening up iMessage and I&#x27;m pretty sure that Apple already has implemented most of it. Otherwise, they cannot realistically follow the DMA timeline in the worst case where EU designate iMessage as a gatekeeper.

I&#x27;m pretty happy about this, I don&#x27;t think Apple should be forced to open up iMessage, but not adopting the RCS standard always seemed a bit underhanded to me. Even if it sucks, better cross-platform messaging is a win for everyone.

I&#x27;m curious if this means Apple will run their own RCS service for their customers or will rely on a telco provided one.<p>I tried to find info for example about RCS in Australia, and saw a piece about Telstra launching RCS in 2017... but now it&#x27;s apparently turned off and customers are expected to use the Google RCS service?

I really hope Apple allows us to disable many of RCS&#x27;s features like read receipts and previews.<p>I really don&#x27;t want spammy users to start seeing read receipts, etc.

It&#x27;s almost too late, at least here in Europe, WhatsApp is pretty ubiquitous, probably because the split between Android and iPhone is much more even.<p>Even my elderly relatives use WhatsApp, it&#x27;s that popular. My local village has a chat group on it.

And eventually, we&#x27;ll go through cvs, svn, and then _finally_ get git on the iPhone?

Oddly related from yesterday:<p><i>Nothing Phone says it will hack into iMessage, bring blue bubbles to Android</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38271775">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38271775</a>

Interestingly enough the person who wrote the white paper for the signal protocol implementation in Googles RCS, Emad Omara, now works for Apple <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gstatic.com&#x2F;messages&#x2F;papers&#x2F;messages_e2ee.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gstatic.com&#x2F;messages&#x2F;papers&#x2F;messages_e2ee.pdf</a>

Google ran a clever “Time for SMS to exit the chat” campaign some time ago. Might have helped precipitate this decision. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;N_B0riy__rw?si=C-gDkNbmb3MFyWao" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;N_B0riy__rw?si=C-gDkNbmb3MFyWao</a><p>Telcos live in the Stone Age. A little disruption is well overdue.

It&#x27;s funny that everyone says &quot;green bubble shame&quot;. Green bubble never meant &quot;Android&quot;. It just meant SMS. I get green bubbles with iPhones sometimes when my data isn&#x27;t working but SMS is. The whole point was to tell you that you may be charged for the message because some carries charge per SMS.

What’s the story around e2e encryption on RCS these days? In the past there were a few countries that didn’t allow it, no idea if that has changed.<p>Also, will iMessage support for RCS include e2ee?

Hopefully I can turn it off.<p>I do not know anyone who uses RCS who didn&#x27;t end up on WhatsApp or Telegram pretty quickly afterwards.

Please let users be able to disable RCS support. One nice thing about iMessage is that lacks spam. It is the only platform where i don&#x27;t get spammed by bots.

So does this mean we can run our own RCS servers, just like email?<p>Probably a pain to set up, but should be possible. Since it&#x27;s based on IMS which in turn is based on SIP, Open Source SIP servers could be the used, e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensips.org&#x2F;Documentation&#x2F;Tutorials-RCS-Managing-Capabilities" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.opensips.org&#x2F;Documentation&#x2F;Tutorials-RCS-Managin...</a>.<p>Also, will they allow using URI&#x27;s instead of phone numbers for contacts?

This is great to hear. Apple should be selling phones because their phones are better, or iMessage is, not because of social pressure, which is crazy.

Should we expect that delivery status notification will work and be surfaced in the UI? I end up encouraging those who are on SMS to go to WhatsApp just because I can never be sure that the message was delivered. Working across many countries and providers, SMS is still very unreliable. There is no way in iOS to know if a green bubble got the message or not.

Hopefully this&#x27;ll mean better Google Fi support for the iPhone. It&#x27;s a little janky, but $20&#x2F;line is hard to pass up.

Is RCS a thing in Europe? I don’t think I’ve ever seen this mentioned anywhere. Does the carrier sell you an RCS package? Does it apply to messages to other countries? If that’s the case, I don’t see how it could compete with any internet message service that exists today in any capacity.

PSA: While Google&#x27;s Messages app previously always asked if you want to enable RCS (which I always declined), their latest October update enabled it without asking.<p>It also enabled read messages notification to the sender as well as realtime typing notification to the peer.

Anyone have an idea what features the &quot;RCS Universal Profile, the standard as currently published by the GSM Association&quot; actually entails for users in terms of feature support?<p>I know E2E encryption isn&#x27;t a part of it, but was having trouble finding information about whether the Universal Profile includes other features like replies, read receipts, typing indicators, reactions, voice messages, etc.<p>As an aside, this is huge but the media is really milking the clickbait when reporting &quot;the end of green bubble shame&quot; - even if Apple were to support all of the above features in their RCS implementation, I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ll keep the bubbles green. They&#x27;ve always been adept at designing for user psychology.

this is meant to hold back regulators, just for a couple more years, so, for a couple more years it will be green bubbles android, blue bubbles iOS.<p>The teenage market share is 87% currently. just a couple more years is all they need.

I wonder what&#x27;s the play here. They seem to make noise about RCS recently and give it attention, even though it seems they&#x27;ll be forced by the EU to open up the iMessage system soon. Apple is not known for Google&#x27;s &quot;let&#x27;s have 5 different communication apps at the same time&quot;, so... what&#x27;s happening here?

Probably related to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;nothing-phone-2-is-getting-imessage-support-this-friday--with-some-catches-194655776.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.engadget.com&#x2F;nothing-phone-2-is-getting-imessage...</a> Or at least they may have moved the announcement forward

It would be cool if They could add features to group chats like adding or removing participants.

I&#x27;m willing to bet the RCS bubble will still be green to indicate loss of p2p encryption.

From a german perspective that looks strange.<p>3 of at the time 4 carriers tried to adopt RCS and push it into the market a few years ago. They called it &quot;joyn&quot; but nobody ever used it. Everybody is using WhatsApp, except for some privacy conscious folks.

Im not sure this is much of a surprise-- as shocking as it may seem to Americans -- iMessages is not widely used outside of North America.<p>So Apple is just trying to bridge the technology gap here. iMessages is pretty dated.

I wonder if Apple will let you disable iMessage and use just RCS instead?

Is there a sunset timeline for SMS? No service lasts forever and if Apple knows carriers will want to turn it off sometime they&#x27;d have to get on board with the RCS sooner rather than too late.

Thumbs up (and other reaction responses)?<p>Does this mean giving an RCS message a &quot;thumbs up&quot; (or heart, or &quot;haha&quot;) will now be supported from iOS and vice versa?

Note that this is &quot;Rich Communication Services&quot;, not &quot;Reaction Control System&quot; from KSP which would have been a much more dramatic update.

Now if only they would open iMessage or at least release Windows&#x2F;Linux&#x2F;Web&#x2F;Android clients so I can give up BlueBubbles. One can dream...

Would this allow texting without a phone?<p>My kid doesn’t want a phone but wants to text his friends. Are there any options or will there be after this?

It would be nice if Google would support RCS first!<p>Specifically in Google Voice which for some perplexing reason does not support it.

I wonder when Google will add proper RCS to their own Google Fi?<p>Currently one has to disable Fi cloud sync losing a lot of features.

Sweet! Now Google can stop complaining.

Will Google drop their request for iMessage to be opened? Will that request become obsolete?

And there I was thinking that Apple would finally introduce a Revision Control System.

Did Nothing Phones chat app announcement influence Apple&#x27;s surprise announcement?

Time for another color, blue for iMessages, green for SMS, light brown for RCS.

I love that this was but moments after Nothing was announcing iMessage support.

Looks like those Android iMessage guys had some information ahead of time.

I doubt they&#x27;ll give the messages the same background color though.

I wonder why they didn&#x27;t at least go with SCCS, maybe even CVS?

Can’t they fix the 0-day no-open message exploits first?

What is the over&#x2F;under on RCS messages still being green?

Yay, more third world pressure to bring ios down to android&#x27;s level.<p>What&#x27;s next? My iphone coming preinstalled with whatsapp with 5 norton antivirus refund rooms already prejoined?

lol, Apple is so &quot;innovative&quot;. It only takes them to be last to implement something like that. And USB-C too.

Using a compatible standard like this should be a requirement to be allowed to sell your phones anywhere or use any radio spectrum or be compatible with any carrier.

Bit late. They should at least support svn.

Still will have a green bubble though

I wonder what color the bubble will be?

I don&#x27;t think Google would have even cared about RCS if Apple would just make the bubbles the same color. Kids these days.

Now give us the FaceTime app...

Hooray for regulation.

I hope they continue the green bubble shaming. Apparently RCS (at least as implemented in practice) still doesn&#x27;t support end to end encryption.<p>In particular, they should color messages green if they can be forged by intermediaries &#x2F; collected for bulk surveillance &#x2F; used for ad targeting &#x2F; sold to third parties by your carrier &#x2F; etc.

So now Apple users can finally receive video?<p>Yay! I can send gym memes to my iphone friend!<p>Oh wait they still cant open .webm without a half dozen steps. Oh well. Lols for us Androids only. Maybe iphones can open webms by 2028.

Thanks, I&#x27;m sticking to iMessage.

Someone please roll poor Steve back over.

Can we please get SD Card expandable storage back next?

I have only used Android phones and I strongly dislike RCS. RCS in theory is a standard but in practice it is == &quot;Google Messages&quot; the app. I don&#x27;t know of a single telco that supports it (hosting their own infra of it), nor does any other SMS app (maybe 1 or 2 being exception that proves the rule). RCS(Google Messages) is just another messaging app like Whatsapp&#x2F;Signal just that it pretends being a standard. AFAIK AOSP has no RCS APIs like it has for SMS. Not to mention the amount of SPAM one gets on RCS is comparable only to traditional SMS, and blocking has no effect unlike Whatsapp. It exists mainly because Google got tired of making messaging apps that weren&#x27;t dominating the world (Hangouts&#x2F;Allo) and thought that forcing a standard might be the only option available to them. E2E is optional and there is no switch that says only do E2E.<p>There might be some solution needed to let iMessage interoperate with Android, but pretending RCS is a standard just like SMS that Apple was not supporting is wishful thinking.